After Her Husband Was Taken, She Wasn’t Left Alone

Pastor Emmanuel Hills spent his life building up the church he founded in Bokkos — The Wonderful Grace of God Evangelical Ministry — after years serving at Dunamis Church. On August 28, he and his wife, Scholastica, made what was supposed to be a brief medical trip to Jos. On the road home that evening, he was abducted. He didn’t come home.

What his death left behind is what this story is really about: Scholastica, suddenly widowed with five children, a congregation without its pastor, and a community trying to make sense of a loss that violence never explains.

That was the worst news of my life, and to this moment, I have yet to come to terms with it.

Equipping the Persecuted came alongside Scholastica in the immediate aftermath — not with statements, but with practical support for her most immediate needs, and the harder, quieter work of reminding her she wasn’t facing this alone. That’s the part of the work that doesn’t end when the headlines move on.

Behind every number in a report is a family left grieving. A widow suddenly without her husband. Five children without their father. A community that has to decide, together, how to keep going. Equipping the Persecuted’s commitment doesn’t stop at the moment of crisis — it continues into the difficult days, weeks, and months that follow, when the rest of the world has already turned its attention elsewhere.